They Trained in Montana, Polaris Dawn Talks Space Walk Mission

We caught up with Space X's Polaris Dawn crew before they went into space...so we better catch up with them after their mission in space...especially since they trained in Montana.

I heard the news LIVE on Fox & Friends while I was headed into our radio studios one morning. The Polaris Dawn crew was conducting the first ever commercial space walk. Then it dawned on me: wait a minute, these guys trained in Montana!

This was very cool- about a year ago I had heard that SpaceX and the crew from the Polaris Dawn mission was on the ground in Montana. We got a chance to chat with Mission Pilot Scott "Kidd" Poteet as they got ready to conduct training missions in the Bozeman area back in September of 2023.

Coming up on Tuesday's Montana Talks statewide radio show with Aaron Flint, we'll catch up with Kidd Poteet to talk about how the mission went, and how the training in Montana prepared them for the trip. Listen in at 940 a.m. on Tuesday Sept. 24th, 2024. Click here for station listing. 

Here's what Kidd Poteet told us back in 2023 before the space mission:

Kidd Poteet retired from the Air Force as a Lieutenant Colonel before teaming up with SpaceX. At one point in his Air Force Career he was an Air Force Thunderbird pilot. In an interview on our "Montana Talks with Aaron Flint" statewide radio show- Kidd described their training objectives and what type of aircraft will be on the ground, and in the air, in Montana.

Polaris Dawn aircraft in Montana:

Kidd Poteet: We're going to bring in about 14 fighter jets, most of them L-39s. It's a two-seater, single engine fighter jet. We have two alpha jets, two-seater two-engine, used for training and some air-to-ground type missions. And then the last fighter jet is a MIG 29, which is quite impressive. It's the equivalent of an F-16 developed and flown by Russia, as well as some other countries and in Europe, as well as South America. And then we're also going to bring in a what's called a Sero G 707. It's a big commercial type aircraft that allows us to fly parabolic profile type experiences for us. What that gives us is about 30 seconds of Zero G. And we're going to do about 15 of these parabolic profiles, and we're actually going to attempt some of our science and research experiments that we're going to do on orbit. So this gives us an opportunity to use some of the devices and some of the technology and the equipment that we're going to take up into the capsule and we get kind of a dry run to try out these experiments.

 

What is Kidd Poteet the most excited about Montana?

Kidd Poteet: There's so many things we're excited about. I mean the training itself has been awesome. I break it down into three phases, you got the basic fundamentals where we do a lot of simulator and academic training, learning the systems of the spacecraft. Phase two is kind of the specialized training based on what we're trying to accomplish with the spacewalk and the altitude and the Starlink technology. And then the third, the most fun, is the team building exercises that we've done. We started off with some scuba diving off of Catalina Island and California. We went to Ecuador and climbed Cotopaxi volcano, which was awesome. Over 19,000 feet on that peak. We've done a lot of fighter jet training. And we got some some more events scheduled before the launch coming up. So just working with this team is just, it's an amazing experience. I couldn't imagine a better crew to do this with. So we're just excited about everything in this mission, and we look forward to heading to space.

Click here for full audio from that prior report.